


I see a colour cascading (a lightning escaping our hearts)

by singtome



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - ? ? ?, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Existentialism, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Trauma, Unrequited Crush, time loops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22217509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singtome/pseuds/singtome
Summary: Theo becomes dully aware of the fact that there is a Blank Spot in his bedroom on that Saturday night.(The Vegas years go on, and they go on, and they go on.)
Relationships: Theodore Decker & Boris Pavlikovsky, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 26
Kudos: 199





	I see a colour cascading (a lightning escaping our hearts)

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because I watched Coherence one time.
> 
> Title from _Crowded out_ by Funeral Suits.

XI. HADES

Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary

XIX. FROM THE ARCHAIC TO THE FAST SELF

Realty is a sound; you have to tune it in to not just keep yelling.

_from Anne Carson, “Autobiography of Red” _

___

There wasn’t necessarily an exact moment where Theo became aware of the loop, but if he was forced to narrow it down he would say it was July 21st, on a Saturday. It had been overcast all day but that night when Theo looked up at the sky - and he noticed it three bottles in, yes, _however -_ it had a strange sheen of green to it lining the edges of the clouds. Theo couldn’t help thinking it looked like it would be sick.

It also looked as if it would hail.

“Don’t be fucked,” Boris had slurred, laid back on the concrete, legs dangling over the lip of the pool, eyes shut. “Hail? Here? _Bah_.”

Theo rolled on to his side and kicked Boris in the knee, who lurched back and swore, very loud and over-dramatically for a while.

Theo remembers thinking _Stranger things have happened_ and not much else after that, having fallen asleep with the sky and its strange green hue above him, and to the sound of Boris’ drunken rendition of a Polish folk song in his ear.

It did not hail.

Theo, he must admit, felt quite foolish waiting for it.

_

His bedroom feels too hot like someone woke in the middle of the night to turn up the thermostat, for some reason cold in the mid-July heat. Theo blinks open his eyes and finds his room bathed in yellow sunlight. Popchik sleeps beside his head, and Theo can smell the musk of him so strongly it makes him feel somewhat ill.

“When did you last have a bath?” Theo asks the dog and the open air and realises he doesn’t know himself, and that is answer enough.

Rolling on to his side, Theo gropes for his phone with one eye open, the world blurry without his glasses. He texts Boris **_Come ovr 2day. Pop needs a bath._**

He receives a reply three minutes and forty seconds later that says, simple, **_net_**.

Theo frowns, still without his glasses. **_Bring beer._** Then, **_Why?_**

**_get ur own beer_ **

**_Don’t b a bitch._ **

Boris texts, ** _date._** And Theo frowns harder. Popper paws at his shoulder and whines, most likely hungry. Theo pushes him away irritably, wiping dark hair off his forehead.

**_What?_ **

**_wth kotku. i promise potter. c u 2tmrw._ **

Popchik whines louder, now looking at him with watery eyes and sad ears, and Theo swears. He’ll be like this all day, now, even after he is fed. Theo will play with him and pet him but he will always be watching the back door as if waiting for the moment where Boris’ lanky, malnourished frame will waltz through it. Theo’s stomach churns. 

**_Since when do you go on dates?_** He types. He doesn’t send it.

“Looks like it’s going to rain,” Xandra muses, sitting at the breakfast table with her plate of special no gluten pancakes and her morning juice, squinting at the sky out the window like she thoroughly disapproves of whatever it’s doing.

Her eyeliner is smudged slightly over her right eyelid and a bit on her cheekbone. Theo stares at it as he chews his toast.

“Out here?” the back of his dad’s head says with a scoff. He sits facing the television, where a game of football plays at 50% volume. He is reading a paper. “In July? No, Xan.”

Xandra clicks her tongue at him and demands in her raspy, wreaked-from-years-of-chain-smoking-cigarettes voice, “You come have a look at it, then.”

“I’m not getting up.”

“Of course, not –”

“It’s not gonna fuckin’ rain, babe –”

Theo pushes the plate of toast crusts away from him and stands, the legs of his chair scraping against the lino.

“My friend Lacy says – Hey! Put those in the bin and clean that up. Don’t be lazy. She says –”

“Oh, _Lacy_ says.” 

Theo walks to the bin with Popper at his heels begging for scraps. He spares him a small piece of crust, and it makes him happy.

As he is walking away he hears Xandra ask, voice twisted in a way that suggests her mouth is curled, nose scrunched up, “What’s that fuckin’ smell?”

And his dad: “It’s the fuckin’ dog. I _told_ you not to keep him in the house. He’s a fuckin’ animal, Xan.”

When he returns to his room the sky is the same bright, washed-out blue. Not a cloud in sight.

Theo becomes dully aware of the fact that there is a Blank Spot in his bedroom, on that Saturday night. He returns inside with Boris at his back, tripping and bumping off the walls before finally muttering something in either Polish or Russian or some garbled mess of the two, and falling on to Theo’s bed.

He stands in the middle of it for a while, searching for something.

What? He doesn’t know?

 _Something_.

Behind him, Boris mutters in his sleep, as he does often. It frequently boggles Theo how he can fall asleep so fast. Popchik curls in the dip of his lower back and falls asleep, too, while Theo paces, too restless and filled with an insane desire to upend his room until he finds It.

Somewhere in the ballgame of an hour the sound of Boris’ breathing stills, and Theo hears him mutter, “Прилягте. Potter. What are you doing?” 

Theo blinks.

Boris stares at him from his bed, one arm tucked under his head and the other dangling over the side, brushing the floor. He seems to be completely disregarding the pillow, and the only thing really visible of his face is one dark eye and the tip of his nose. Long, inky black curls obscure the rest.

The whole scene is faintly fuzzy, and tinted green. Theo narrows his eyes and asks, “What’d you call me?”

Boris sighs loudly and rolls over, dislodging Popchik. He complains for a moment before flopping down next to Boris’ feet and falling right back to sleep.

“Идиот, иди сюда. _Come_.” 

Theo goes. It’s hot in his room, and Boris is almost too warm against his skin, but he allows Boris to sleep with his shoulder pressed to Theo’s anyway, his arm slung over his waist.

Theo doesn’t see Boris for two days after that. When he eventually returns he has a bruise on his neck, the approximate shape and size of a girl’s mouth. Theo bites his tongue all afternoon.

Dad comes home when Theo is watching TV with Popchik on his lap, whistling despite it being 1AM.

He sees Theo and Theo sees him, sees that he is on something. A part of him thinks he should be angry, blood curdling with rage over Lies and Broken Promises, but a larger part of him is suffering a sleepless night and gentle apathy settled in hours ago.

Eyes squinting in the dark, Dad asks, “Theodore. Kiddo.” He laughs, like that for some reason is funny. “What time is it?”

Theo checks his watch, sees it has run out of battery, and guesses, “Probably one or two.”

“Shit, wow. You should be in bed, yeah. You should. What time is it?” Theo doesn’t answer this time. “Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

Theo tells him, “It’s summer.”

Dad squints into the darkness. “Ah. Yeah, it is.”

He climbs the stairs to his bedroom, and Theo remains downstairs for another hour.

The desert sun beats down on the back of Theo’s neck while he scoops leaves out of the pool under Xandra’s supervision which is, of course, the moment Boris decides to drop in. As usual: when she is lounged back on the blue banana chair, meter-long tan legs on display. She talks loudly to one of her friends on her sparkly pink flip phone, pausing to quip criticisms at Theo every now and then.

“You missed a spot over by the shallow end.”

“Yeah, I got it,” Theo all but spits, watching Boris come around the back through the side gate. He peeks around the corner, black curls whipping around in the wind. He looks at Theo, and Theo looks back and shrugs, and Boris reveals himself fully like a boy with nothing to lose.

“Good morning!” he announces, and Popper, hearing his voice, perks up and runs over to him on his short stubby legs, yapping like an imbecile. “Beautiful day, no?” 

Xandra pauses her conversation, and Theo sees her looking at Boris like she doesn’t completely approve of his presence in her back yard, but he is over here so often that at this point she’s powerless to stop him.

Boris waves broadly at her. She nods her head back.

Theo kicks the spare net over to him and says, “Make yourself useful.”

Boris looks over at the net, then at the pool, then back at the net with a nondescript shrug. He picks it up and attempts to spin it in his hand like a baton, and ends up dropping it in a dramatic fashion. Theo laughs under his breath.

Boris picks the net back up with both his hands this time, grinning broadly. “Of course. Looks like fun.”

“We’re not catching butterflies.”

What they do catch: empty packets of junk food, five discarded cigarette buds, one cigar Theo has to lean over and fish out from the bottom of the pool, a used condom (he doesn’t want to know), a lottery ticket, an old bikini bottom of Xandra’s, and approximately fifty-thousand fucking leaves.

When they’re done and Xandra is satisfied with the state of the pool, Boris turns to Popchik, salivating at his feet, and deduces, “He needs a bath.”

“Yeah, so shit. I told you that, like, last week.”

“Oh.” Boris looks confused. “When?”

 _Right_. Theo sighs. “Never mind. Just help me with him.”

They wait until Xandra leaves for work before getting the hose and setting Popper up outside. The idea is one of them will hold him and the other will spray.

What happens instead: Popper gets one look at the hose pointed in his direction and bolts, and the two of them chase him around the yard with the hose on, spraying him in sporadic intervals. At one point Boris manages to catch him and holds him down, lying on the concrete with Popper on his chest, flailing. He ends up getting a bath along with the dog, laughing and shouting in a mix of Polish and Russian while Theo hoses him down without mercy.

When Popper is Clean Enough they allow him to run off somewhere into the house, dripping wet, which Theo will most definitely hear about later. Boris springs up and steals the hose off Theo when he is distracted and turns it on him.

Under the setting sun, in a neighbourhood empty of souls, two boys run around the length of a swimming pool, one dripping wet and holding a hose at the other, who flees without success. Both of them are laughing. 

The Blank Spot laughs, too.

It laughs at Theo when he sleeps and remains quiet when he wakes.

_

Sometimes, Theo _wants_ to be alone.

It isn’t often, but when;

His father has come home from the casino and he is drunk and high off a night that has actually gone his way for once. He sings loudly in the kitchen and Xandra joins him, her deep, boisterous laugh echoing through the house and piercing his ears.

(in the echo; he hears a woman’s softer one, a laugh that sounds like cinnamon on Christmas morning, pancakes on his birthday.)

The television is too loud and Boris turns it up higher because he complains he can’t hear it. Popchik licks at his face and he tilts his head back out of the way. The glow from the TV traces a silver path along his profile, and Theo feels a churning in his chest and abdomen.

Popper is yapping because he is hungry and they have no food in the fridge. Theo drinks his dad’s six-pack of beer to quell his own rumbling belly, knowing the man will notice them missing and he _will_ pay for it if he doesn’t replace them soon.

When he thinks about texting Boris so they can get high, or drunk, or both, and they can lie on the edge of the swimming pool and Theo can put on his shirt and Boris won’t say anything, because he never says anything. He remembers he is probably with Kotku and stops.

(he wants to shout when he hears her name, scream into the blackness of the desert until his vocal cords are ripped to shreds.)

But, when;

Boris is in his bed, a fresh bruise over his eye this time, and curled into Theo’s side. When he feels small with his arms around him, somehow like he has become smaller than Theo, and cries quietly when he thinks Theo is asleep.

Theo’s eyes are closed and he sees an explosion of grey in a room too white to be real, and where he knows should be screaming and cries of anguish, his own included, there is only static. When he wakes with a hammering heart and a cry on the tip of his tongue to feel Boris’ arms immediately around him, groping at his sleepily, and his voice in his ear.

“Спать. Спать, Potter. Это не реально. A dream. I’m here.”

He doesn’t.

Boris drags him to a party he doesn’t want to go to.

He borrows the shirt Theo’s father lent to him that one time; the one that he only buttons up halfway and tucks into his pants so he looks like a pirate, and Theo wears the same old T-Shirt and jeans out of spite. Boris tuts his disapproval and licks a stripe up the palm of his hand, and promptly sticks it in Theo’s hair.

Theo turns beat red and squawks, pushing him away hard enough that he nearly topples back into the nightstand. Boris huffs in exasperation. “Am trying to make it look cool, Potter! Whatever, never mind. We are late, anyway.”

The Polish Pirate begins his stride to the door, and Theo follows behind, adjusting his shirt. There are only two people in the whole world that Boris would voluntarily be on time and look good for, and that is Kotku and Larry Decker.

(His father he can deal with, but there are days, and there are many of them, where Theo wishes he could go back to a time where Kotku didn’t exist.)

The party is at a house belonging to one of the kids at their school, a senior supposedly. This is a good thing; _Cool_. Or so Boris keeps telling him. The front of the yard is already a junkyard by the time they get there, resembling the actual junkyard that the two of them get high at sometimes. The style of Las Vegas High School House Parties, Theo has quickly learnt, is Loud and Chaotic and Destroy what you can and Fuck who you can in as little time as possible. Prizes for winning are what? A metal? There has to be something because everyone here sure acts like there is.

Boris slings an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in close to shout, as giddy as a child, “This is fucking bonkers, right!” and something about the curve of the vowels in his accent shifts to make him sound jarringly Australian, and Theo pulls away in disgust.

“It’s like every other fucking one you’ve dragged me to, yeah!”

Boris’ expression softens, and he bumps his shoulder against Theo’s. His skin is warm beneath the pirate shirt. “Tonight will be fun. I promise.” Theo raises an eyebrow. His glasses sit lower on his nose (Boris did it. Said it looks – wait for it – _cool_.) “It will! Cross my heart. Here.”

Boris reaches out and takes Theo’s hand, folding his fingers down but keeps his index up, and moves his hand across his chest in a crossing motion. Theo’s finger catches on a button and pulls the shirt taut, almost exposing a nipple. He tried very hard not to react in any way.

“It’s crossed!” Boris beams, “See! Now you will have a good night.”

Theo rolls his eyes and thinks, _We’ll see._

On the inside, the party looks just about as demoralizing as it appears from the outside if not worse, and Theo feels a headache form five steps through the door. Someone Theo doesn’t recognise shouts Boris’ name from a nondescript corner of the house and the next thing he knows there are red solo cups being shoved into their hands and a flash of purple sparks in the edge of Theo’s vision, and there is Kotku and her mouth is immediately on Boris’ and his arms are around her waist, the liquid in his cup spilling on the floor and hitting Theo’s shoes.

All of his senses work against him all at once and everything is too much too loud too bright too _close_ and Theo shouts at Boris, “I’m going outside!” but his lips are now at Kotku’s throat, his hands dangerously close to her ass, and he whispers something in her ear while she laughs, somehow more piercing than the music.

Theo leaves them in the hallway. Halfway out the back door he begins and finishes his cup of watered-down beer, crushing the remains of the cup in his hand and throwing it away.

The backyard is only slightly better than the house; the freedom of space means people spread out more. There are people in the pool and in the covered barbeque area and by the out-door dining (Theo remembers Boris being particularly impressed by the concept on the way over) finding creative ways to make out in all of them in various states of inebriation.

Someone touches his elbow and Theo jumps.

“Oh!” the girl giggles. Her lipstick is smudged and her hair is dyed a vibrant purple, and her eyes are glassy when she looks at Theo. “Jumpy! Cute. You want another drink?”

If Theo squints, he thinks he could vaguely recognise her as a senior from his school, but then again she’d fit the description of over half the girls at his school if you were to describe her to a forensic sketch artist, so.

Theo says, “I’m good,” and walks away. 

A wooden fence in a herringbone pattern lines the edge of the yard and he finds a dark corner and sits, leaning back against it., his back against the black void of the open desert. If the music wasn’t so loud he would probably hear cayotes howling or owls shouting or whatever the fuck animal noise belongs to whatever the fuck animals that live in the desert, Theo has no clue. He pulls out his phone and plays Tetris until someone loudly falls onto the patch of dirt beside him.

Theo opens his mouth to tell them to get fucked, but it’s Boris.

“Hah!” he huffs as he settles, obviously _much_ drunker than Theo. He suddenly regrets not accepting that drink. “Wild night!”

“Mmn.”

“You’re not having fun?”

Theo shrugs, nondescript, and Boris clicks his tongue. “No, Potter, you must! Tell me,” he turns to Theo, and Theo almost groans aloud. His lips are swollen red and his cheeks are flushed, hair more of a mess than regular, and his shirt has two more buttons undone. A new hickey is forming on his collarbone. Theo wants to simultaneously throw up and never look away, “Tell me how to make it better.”

And – unfairly so – his mind flashes back to a time many months ago. Boris on Theo’s couch, both of them drunk off their asses but not enough for Theo to _not_ remember, a fresh bruise on his lovely face and Theo couldn’t help crawling up alongside him, wobbly and clumsy until he fell into Boris’ lap and said, he said, his arms around Boris’ shoulders and his hands slipping under Theo’s jumper before he’s even said anything, he said, _How can I make it better –_

Boris’ eyes widen and his mouth falls open a sliver and Theo _knows_ he’s thinking about it, too, but no no no, that is the past, they haven’t dared go there since Kotku popped into existence and she and Boris became “official”, not since those first few weeks where it was rocky and Theo felt like he had something to prove. 

Someone inside the house must drop something because a loud crash followed by excessive shouting and hoots breaks Boris out of his trance. “You want to go home!” he says.

 _No shit_ , Theo thinks, and says, “No, I don’t really.”

Boris nods sagely, and the next conclusion he comes to is, “You need to be drunker.”

Finally, something he can agree with.

He, as expertly as possible, gets Theo drunk until he can’t give two shits where he is or how loud the music is and how the bright lights hurt his eyes and the smoke machine hurts something else, something buried deep inside his brain. He and Boris clutch at each other and sing some Polish folk song at the top of their lungs – Theo not really singing, more so making sounds to mimic Boris’ singing – and at one point he feels someone touching him and it isn’t Boris, and Boris tells them to fuck off loudly in about three different languages.

He remembers asking Boris where Kotku is and him replying, “Fuck knows, Potter!” in a cheerful voice that makes him burst out laughing. He remembers how nice it felt to ask.

He does not remember walking home.

He remembers clutching at Boris, at the stupid shirt that belongs to his dad, at his hair, and he remembers Boris’ lips at his throat, babbling in Russian, words Theo does not know.

He makes sure he is gone when Boris wakes up.

And Boris is gone when he returns.

Dad walks through the back door when Theo is lounged on the couch, earbuds in his ears. He stares at his son a moment and Theo hears the words in his mouth before they are free:

“Don’t you have school?”

“It’s summer, dad.”

“So it is.”

He avoids Boris for a whole 48 hours even though he knows what will happen: Boris, greeting him at the end of the street with a smile and a tin of crushed Vicodin, and they two will go on as if nothing happened.

That is exactly what happens, plus –

“Do you ever get, like,” Boris reaches out and knocks on the side of Theo’s head, “like _that?_ ”

Theo pushes him away. “Fuck _off_.” The swing twists one time and slowly spins him back out, Boris’ legs kicking outwards from his body. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“Like!” Boris sighs exuberantly, looking to the stars like they can give him the answer instead, “Like knock knock, Potter! Right here. Loud and painful.”

Theo squints at him in the dark. “Motherfucker. You mean a headache?”

Boris shakes his head.

“Well, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Okay,” Boris grabs Theo’s swing and angles him to that they are face to face, pulling him in close enough that their knees touch. “Imagine, Potter. A feeling like someone poking you from inside of head. Yes?”

“No …” Theo grins at him. “I think you took too much molly.”

Boris lets him go so that he swings out too fast, the world tuning into a blur of darkness and shooting stars.

Theo says, “You just have a headache, Boris. I get those, everyone gets those. The powder’s just fucking with you.”

Boris remains quiet. Theo turns to him and finds him gazing up at the sky again, his stare glassy and unblinking.

“Boris?”

Nothing.

Theo draws a circle in the sand with his foot. The wind blows it away every few seconds and he must re-draw it. He finds himself wondering if deserts have Blank Spots like the one in his bedroom, if Boris himself has a Blank Spot. He finds himself saying, “Sometimes it feels like I’m still there. At the museum. Sometimes it feels like I never got out.”

Slowly, Boris turns his gaze away from the infinite star system back to Theo. His eyes are dark enough to get lost in, but it would be warm and safe and familiar, and Theo thinks he wouldn’t much mind that at all.

Boris says, “Maybe you did. Maybe you didn’t.” 

Theo sends letters to New York. To Pippa and Hobbie and to the Barbours. Maybe he should start sending them with a return address if he expects any back.

One day he opens the mailbox and finds that the mailman has forgotten their house again, and for a moment just stands there wondering if any of them ever really sent.

The Blank Spot beats it’s wings and blinks at Theo with steely, black eyes.

He thinks it is under his bed. It isn’t in his underwear drawer on in his closet or under the desk or behind the shitty little television, and never under the pillow Boris cuddles to his chest when Theo leaves in the middle of the night to pee, and comes back to find him like that. 

He knows it is under his bed.

He dreams of smoke and dust, of carnage and chaos and pain, and of a girl with red hair and freckles.

He dreams of his mother and her hand on his shoulder, and her long black hair tickling his cheek as she leans down to whisper in his ear. There is a dreaminess in her tone that feels to Theo like warm caramel in winter, chestnuts over a fire, how he’d close his eyes and listen to Symphony no. 5 in C sharp until he felt calm enough to sleep. _This one_ , she says, _this is the painting I love the most._

Then: nothing.

The Blank Spot rattles it’s chain, and screeches loudly in Theo’s ears so that he wakes with a hammering heart.

_There’s nothing out here but dust_.

The sky is overcast, covering the earth in a murky sheen. Theo walks down the street of empty houses in his neighbourhood _(Dust and sand and shit)_ when Boris runs up from behind and tries to scare him by first, shouting like a wildebeest in his ear so that Theo’s heart almost lurches out through his throat. Second, if that isn’t impactful enough, picks him up around the middle and spins him in the air while he yells and kicks and screams, and Boris continues to do so, as well.

“ _Fucker!_ ” Theo cries, “Let me go! Bitch!”

Boris laughs in his ear, gallingly un-cut, and puts him down a moment later. Theo whirls, cheeks pink and fixing his shirt, anger like a hive of hornets flaring up in his chest. Boris’ cheeks are flushed, also, and he looks to be under the influence of something as usual. It makes Theo irrationally angrier, the fact that Boris decided to get high without him.

“Me?” Boris touches his chest and laughs harder, “The bitch? You are the one walking around like girl on her period, Potter.”

Theo turns and walks away. He hears Boris swear, and the sound of his shoes scuffing against the road as he begins to follow.

“Okay, what?”

“Nothing,” Theo gripes.

“There is something.”

“Fuck you.”

Boris barks a laugh, as high as the rest of him. “See? Something! Potter. Cтоп. Potter, давай же. Talk to me. _Theo_.”

Theo snaps like a pencil. He whirls around on Boris so fast it makes him stumble back several paces, and Theo snarls, “Fuck off, Boris! Why are you even here right now? Go hang out with your _girlfriend_.”

He doesn’t mean to spit the word, it’s just how it comes out, and Boris’ face twists as soon as he hears it.

He says, “What is your problem?”

Something builds inside Theo. A storm, a tornado, he doesn’t know. Whatever it is it’s untamed and unchecked, and threatens to burst free. It’s the feeling that pushes at Theo’s skin when he can’t sleep, when he feels like he can’t breathe, when his ears are ringing and he smells smoke –

“Her.” He says, “I fucking hate her.”

“Okay,” Boris’ eyebrows furrow, “She hates you, too. Knows you don’t like her.”

Theo laughs, and it is ugly. “Oh. the bimbo has half a brain cell after all, who would’ve thought?”

Boris’ hands ball into fists, and his shoulders square. “Take that back.”

But Theo is shaking. “No. I won’t take it back. She has you wrapped around her bony little finger and you don’t –”

Boris lunges and the next second they are on the ground, punching and kicking and swearing; Theo on his back with both of Boris’ wrists in his hands and Boris sitting on his hips, all elbows and knees.

“Мудак!”

“Fuck you!”

And then it happens –

Theo’s head falls back against the grey, cracked asphalt with a smack, and he is transported back to a night four, five, six weeks ago at least. There is an ache in his chest so profound it stops his airflow, and above him Boris looms, tall and bony, his face fuzzy but concerned. _Potter_ , he said, _Potter, get up,_ his words slurred from the vodka they’d been sharing, and Theo says, _No_ , he says, _Leave me here,_ and Boris says, _You will get run over by car,_ and Theo’s chest hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and he just cries, _Let me. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care._

Theo gasps, like all the air he had been missing that night returned to him all at once, and above him Boris stills and does the same.

He looks down at Theo like he did that night, his eyebrows furrowed and worry fighting its way through the buzz to the forefront of his dark, stormy eyes, and Theo wants to cry. He doesn’t but it is a close call for a second, and he worries Boris notices.

He reaches out for Theo’s hands like he did that night, and says his name like he did that night – his name, _Theo, Theo come_ – and pulls him to his feet like he had done.

Theo goes with him, like he did.

He does not cry, and the world does not dance around him like it is a carousel and Theo and Boris are at the centre of it, the core, the twin suns, and he does not allow Boris to scoop him up on his back and carry him home. 

Instead, they stand there, looking at each other in the middle of the empty street – two boys, one sober and the other sobering, words on their tongues that do not make it out into the waking world.

Theo sinks to the bottom of the swimming pool, always.

Boris swims down and pulls him up, always.

This, he thinks, is the way of this world.

“It’s a fucking _snow globe!”_ Theo bellows at the TV, tossing a chip at the stupid face of the dumbfuck contestant on the fuckshit game show Boris has switched it over to. Boris rolls back on the carpet and laughs like this is the funniest thing Theo has ever said.

He is with Theo tonight, despite the fact that he’s spent almost every Thursday thus far with Kotku.

He refuses to let it feel like a – like _anything_ , and focuses his attention back to the show.

The contestant says, “A … cookie tin?” and Theo groans.

“You jackass.”

Boris laughs more.

“Obvious?”

“Yes, of course it’s obvious, Boris!”

Boris squints into the bottom of his empty beer bottle. “A shoe? Could be a shoe. Or a bottle.”

“Are you _kidding?_ ”

Boris snickers, his shoulders hunching up to his ears and shaking with his laughter. The glare of the television in the dark room kind of burns Theo’s eyes, and it makes Boris look ghostly. Translucent. “Message in a bottle, Potter?”

Theo frowns. “Fuck off. It’s a snow globe. Of course, it’s a snow globe, what fucking else would it be? You shake us up and we shoot around the glass fucking ball like fake ass snow? Little ass trees? What – it’s – Boris!”

Boris is laughing still. Theo wants to reach out and slap him.

He does.

“What was that?” Boris shouts, clutching his red cheek.

Theo throws his arms out wildly, dodging Boris’ kicks. “This is a snow globe! And we’re the snow. Trapped. Not real.”

“Not real?”

He asks, “When was the last time anything really felt real?”

The contestant loses the prize money in a predictable turn of events. Boris’ eyes are fixed on the running ads when he asks, “Are you happy here, Potter?”

Theo balls his hands into fists on top of his knees. “Are you?”

Outside the desert continues, silent.

Boris says, “Knock knock, Potter.”

_What’s real?_

The museum, the explosion. Was that real?

It was.

The Blank Spot is also real, Theo is sure of it.

Boris …

Boris sounds real, he looks real, he smells real. He feels real, on the nights where he crawls into Theo’s bed and the hushed laughter between them is enough to smother to doubts, the questions, the fears, and the _Boris what is this, what are we doing?_

Boris has never kissed him.

Theo can’t remember if he has ever kissed Boris.

The LED lights on the alarm clock tick silently from 04:00 to 04:01 when Boris rolls over and slings an arm over Theo’s waist. It’s a heavy weight that, if Theo had previously any hope of falling asleep, crumbles it to dust.

It is 4AM and his bedroom is shrouded in shadows of black and green, and Theo has not slept since they feel into bed hours ago. Boris hums against the back of his neck, hand making a slow journey up his torso, and his finger traces the spot on Theo’s collarbone where he left a mark earlier, and Theo let him. His fingers splay out on Theo’s chest and in his sleep, he holds him close.

Something inside him cracks and a tear slips from the corner of his eye and falls over the bridge of his nose. He thinks his chest is caving in, that his lungs have stopped working. He thinks he knows Boris’ Blank Spot, and he thinks it’s _him_.

“How was school?” his father asks him one day.

Theo looks at him and says, “It’s summer, dad.”

“Ah. Yeah, it is.”

He supposes it is always summer.

_“_ _You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last …”_

Shadows dance on the will, willed to life by dim lamplight and the waving form of a tall, lanky teenage boy three sheets to the wind, dancing around the living room with reckless abandon. He sings along to the radio off-key and not very good, the broken English not lending itself to the rhythm well at all. He wears one of Theo’s jumpers that was given to him by Mrs. Barbour, one that was too small for Platt but far too big for Andy and found a middle ground with him. The sleeves fall low over Boris’ knuckles, and it falls to the left, over his shoulder as he dances.

Theo is content to sit back and watch, beer in hand and grinning.

 _“_ _But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast …”_

“Dance with me, Potter!” Boris demands. Popchik yaps at his ankles in excitement, stirred on by the boom of his voice. “Don’t sit over there like boring, miserable shit.”

“But I am a boring, miserable shit,” Theo replies, taking another sip of his beer with a shrug and Boris almost – _almost_ – stops dancing. Theo doesn’t think there is a whole part of him capable of being still in this moment, and even when he turns to look at Theo his ankles are twisting, bare feet dragging along the carpet, shoulders bouncing and arms flinging outward from his body like a stringed doll. Theo watches, observes.

_“Yonder stands your orphan with his gun …”_

“Don’t say that!”

“You said it first!”

“But don’t say it like _that!_ ” Boris leans down suddenly and cups his hands on either side of Theo’s cheeks. Cold, as always.

 _“_ _Crying like a fire in the sun …”_

Theo raises an eyebrow and snorts with the back of his throat, and pushes at Boris’ shoulder with the bottle. “Go back to boogying, you drunk fuck.”

Boris surprises him by actually leaning back. He squints at Theo with dark, bloodshot eyes and flushed cheeks, swaying a tad on his feet. Theo doesn’t feel the need to reach out and steady him in case he falls, but a strange sort of unreasoned panic that he can’t quite place begins to form in his chest.

 _“Look out, the saints are comin' through_ _, and it's all over now, baby blue …”_

“Get up,” Boris demands, once again, and Theo lets out a long sigh.

“Why?”

“Get up. You’re going to dance. No, up. _Now_.” He tugs at his hands. Theo tries to pull away but Boris is oddly sturdy while intoxicated, for whatever reason that isn’t really fair, and succeeds in hoisting Theo to his feet. The beer bottle sloshes to the left and falls from his hands. Amber liquid begins its slow journey into the carpet fibers as Boris drags Theo into the centre of his own living room. 

Thursday night is Xandra and Larry’s date night, so they have the house to themselves. It isn’t any much different than usual, really.

Theo stumbles on his feet and Boris catches him by his elbows just in time. Boris dips, and Theo turns his head, and their faces are close.

 _“_ _The empty-handed painter from your streets_ _is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets …”_

“Прекрасный,” Boris murmurs, barely audible over the music.

Something about the glassy look in his eyes makes Theo feel too exposed. He pushes him again and spits, “English, asshole,” but it falls flat.

Boris blinks, and blinks again, and then the carefree intoxication returns at full force, and he grabs Theo’s arms and begins to spin them. Theo’s socks catch on the carpet and he nearly trips, but Boris keeps him upright.

“What are you doing?” he quips, shocked.

“Dancing!” Boris beams, “One two, one two …”

“Hey!”

But Theo finds he is smiling – laughing, even – and Boris holds him by the wrists and spins them around and around the living room, like two children in a playground, gaining momentum with every turn. 

_“All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home_ _, your empty-handed army is all going home …”_

“ _Faster_ , Potter!”

Theo bends his elbows and grips Boris’ hands tight enough that their knuckles turn white. His head is thrown back and his eyes are closed, and he is laughing and laughing, and Boris has begun to sing again, _“Your lover who just walked out your door_ _has taken all his blankets from the floor!”_ loud and very off-key, and Theo doesn’t think he can remember a time in his life where he felt more _free_.

The world spins so fast it turns to a motion blur of shadows and dim lamp light, and the off-white colour of the walls have turned golden, the furniture a deep umber. They all melt together before Theo’s eyes, and he thinks, _We can let go and the world will continue to spin._

Then Boris grips his hands and he is pulling them into the centre – _“_ _The carpet, too, is moving under you,”_ – and Theo barely manages a gasp before Boris is leaning down and his lips are brushing Theo’s, Theo’s brushing his –

_“And it's all over now, baby blue …”_

Boris mouths the words before his hands are cupping Theo’s face and he is tilting his head and they are kissing, properly now. Theo’s head is spinning, _everything_ is spinning, and neither of them quite manage to stay upright and fall to the floor in a heap; Theo half lying on him, elbow dangerously close to his gut, and Boris is laughing into his shoulder, the usual full-bodied ones that shake his shoulders and chest.

Boris kisses him again. Theo lets him. He lets him for another minute until the song ends and the earth has resumed its ordinary rotation, and the shadows on the wall sharpen to the shape of their bodies, hunched together.

He leans back and asks, “Wait, Boris …”

“What? What is it?”

“Kotku?”

Boris frowns. “Hm?”

“Don’t –” Theo frowns back. “Fuck off, Boris, don’t. _Kotku_.”

“Who?” 

Theo stands up. When he does Boris reaches out and chases him with his hands, and the gesture leaves a tingle of satisfaction in his chest. But still …

“I’m too fucking high for this shit right now.”

Boris’ eyebrows are pinched together, and his eyes are tinged with confusion and hurt. “Potter, I don’t know what you are –”

“I –” Theo covers his face with his hands, sighing deeply through his nose. Doing so blocks his view of Boris, pink cheeks and red lips and the Upset in his eyes, the one Theo put there, well. Good.

“I need to go for a walk,” he says in a mutter.

Boris shifts the way he is sitting to pull one knee into his chest, and he begins to pick at the hole there. “Will you be back?” he asks, uncertain, and Theo bites back the need to point out that this is his own god damn house.

He leaves without answering. Once outside, the cool night air brushes it’s fingers through his hair and across his cheeks and Theo finds it easier to think already. He does three rounds of the neighbourhood and ends at the lonely swing set in the abandoned playground he and Boris visit, the one where they tried ecstasy for the first time and everything turned into an old movie.

An image rears up in his mind unannounced and Theo is transported back to a time many many many years ago of watching _Pleasantville_ with his mother curled up on the couch in their old apartment. She felt warm against his side and her green cotton pyjamas were soft. He remembers fragments of Safety and Love as her long black hair tickled his cheek as the credits rolled and sang, “ _Nothing’s gonna change my world …”_

Well.

 _Jai Guru Deva Om_ , or whatever.

When he returns to the house Boris is still there, albeit curled up in his father’s armchair with Popchik on his lap, a beer bottle hanging precariously from his fingertips, and Theo finds he needs to steady himself for a moment. He’s fallen asleep waiting for him to return.

Theo walks silently across the floor and kneels at Boris’ feet. He’s barely touched him before Boris lurches awake, gasping, “ _Theo_ ,” and blinking at their surroundings like he has forgotten where they are. Popper whines for a moment before deciding whatever panic interrupted his pillow isn’t worth worrying about, and falling back asleep immediately.

Theo presses his lips and sits back on his heels. 

“Ah,” he sighs, rubbing a hand down his face, “Sorry, Potter, you scared me. You came back.”

His accent is lighter and his hair curls more at the roots rather than behind his ears, and the jumper he wears – Theo’s jumper – falls differently over his shoulders than it did before.

Theo says, “I live here.”

“Ah. Yes. Where did you go?”

 _Where did_ you _go?_

Theo waves a hand. “Around.”

Boris nods. He makes a big animated yawn and stretches his legs and arms out until he resembles a starfish, and relaxes just as suddenly. He looks at Theo. Theo looks back, and Boris slowly scoops up Popchik and deposits his small, sleeping form on the love seat beside them, and sinks to the floor with Theo.

He says, “Am sorry, Potter. Am not sure what –” he taps the side of his head and cracks a smile. It falls flat. “Anyway. I … forget things, sometimes. And I forgot …”

Theo mulls this over for half a minute. He watches Boris toy with the sleeve of his jumper before he takes a deep breath, and puts all the cards on the table.

“That other Boris,” he begins, “the one who wants to kiss me, is … nice. But I’d rather you didn’t disappear on me again.”

Boris’ eyes widen to the size of dinner plates.

“I don’t want to walk out of here again and wonder which one of you I’ll be coming back to.”

Boris collapses back against the armchair, and Theo feels all the air from his lungs recede, and stars swim in his vision.

In a way, it feels good to finally say it out loud.

Boris stays over that night and everything is calm. He sleeps beside Theo and faces the wall while Theo faces the rest of the room. The air between them is easy, and not at all like Theo imagined it would be (he imagined anger, confusion, not quite disgust given their previous and current status, but something like it) and he spent a solid hour waiting for it, too. But Boris, after the episode of some shitty reality TV show he’d decided he needed to watch to the end at 4-fucking-AM finally finished, he cupped Theo’s cheek and cheerily announced, “Bedtime, Potter.”

Something, and he can’t quite name what, has shifted between them. Changed, and it feels good.

And it isn’t the only thing that has changed.

The Blank Spot stares at Theo from across the room. It sits in a bag, so he can’t quite see it, but he knows it is there; wrapped in newspaper sheets wrapped in a pillowcase sitting in a rucksack sits the finch, _his_ _finch_ , and watches Theo through all those layers as Theo watches it back.

As it has done so for years.

The Vegas years go on, and they go on, and they go on.

Everything remains the same.

Except –

Boris nearly drops one of Xandra’s crystal glasses she may or may not have won at an antique auction, as the legend goes, and Theo gains approximately three more white hairs. 

He laughs it off, as he does everything. Theo takes it off him and places it carefully on the towel of other drying dishes.

“So other Boris,” he begins, and Theo pauses. The other Boris, the one who Theo hasn’t seen since he’d asked this one to stay put, who they haven’t really talked about, who Boris knows exists just like Theo knows another Theo exists.

(he feels it just under his skin and in the back of his mind. He sees flashes of fragments – he and Boris at the playground taking something he doesn’t remember taking, he and Boris teaching Popper a trick that he can’t for the life of him get the dog to do, as if he’d never actually learnt it. But, other times and the most glaringly obvious, is when Boris asks him about things or continues conversations Theo never began with him, and he _Knows_.)

Boris continues, “He … he kissed you, yes?”

Jesus Christ.

Theo takes a deep breath and picks up a plate. “Yes.”

“Without asking permission first? What a jerk! No way to act like a gentleman.”

Theo snorts. “Oh, and you’re top of the class in that field, huh?”

Boris taps his chest with his thumb. “Straight A’s. Swear it.”

“Uh huh.”

“Believe it, Potter.”

They continue washing the dishes in silence until a few minutes later, when the nagging in the back of Theo’s mind grows relentless, and he can’t keep himself from asking, “And the other …?”

Boris stops drying a single fork. “Oh. He’s fine. An angry shit.”

Theo coughs a laugh. “So no difference?”

“There is difference,” Boris muses and looks over at Theo. His eyes rove his face as if he is trying to pick out differences in it. “I can always tell.”

Theo’s fingertips begin to tickle.

“When did you first notice?”

“A night,” Boris says, “When the sky turned fucking green.”

“Me too.”

“Life, eh?”

“Yeah. Life.” 

Theo doesn’t say, _I want you to stay here but I also want you to want to kiss me again_ , and he also doesn’t say, _You haven’t mentioned Kotku since that night and I want to know what’s happening but I also don’t,_ and he doesn’t say, _Do you remember kissing me?_ and he also doesn’t say, _Do you like him better than me? Did you ever think I liked him better than you?_ and he doesn’t say, _The dreams of the museum have started again but they go away faster when you’re here,_ and he doesn’t say, _I love you._

He says: “Fuckin’ snow globes.”

Dad comes home with Xandra on his arm when Theo is up late watching TV. Neither of them comments on it, and Xandra waves at him loosely before reaching up to plant a kiss on Larry’s cheek, kicking off her heels, and climbing the stairs to their room.

Dad looks at him. He looks back.

“It’s still summer, huh?”

“Yup.”

Boris hasn’t mentioned Kotku for a whole month before Theo puts two and two together and realises they’ve broken up. She had apparently been hooking up with this older guy who went to their school last year for months, and everyone knew about it but Boris, who found out when he’d walked in on them fucking one day.

Boris doesn’t seem all too cut up about it, to be completely honest.

“Was a matter of time,” he shrugs, taking another drag of his cigarette, “Hadn’t been working for a while, me and her, you know? She was always so naggy and kind of a bitch, sometimes. Was more bad than good, you know?”

No, technically, Theo doesn’t know. However theoretically, as he was the one who had to listen to Boris bitch and moan about his girlfriend problems every day, he knows all too well. 

“Do you miss her?” comes out of Theo’s mouth before he can stop it.

Boris looks at him like he’s grown another head. The sunlight shines on his face and turns his eyes a chocolate brown, and Theo finds himself slipping. “Why would I miss? Did you not hear a word I just say, Potter?”

Theo shrugs and picks at the butt of his own cigarette, almost burnt down to the filter, and mutters, “Just checking.”

It’s hot today; not a cloud in the sky, and the sun beams down on them with reckless abandon. The two of them hunch under the shade as close to the pool as they possibly can. Boris hates the sun, as he’d once told Theo, but finds he loves the water.

He feels the heat of Boris’ eyes on him but Theo refuses to look over, a little afraid of what he might find. They hadn’t paused their arrangement, save for that one week after The Incident, even before Theo had found out Boris and Kotku broke up, but lately it’s been different. They haven’t kissed again, but Boris has begun to lace their fingers together afterward when they lay side by side fighting to regain their breath, and sometimes even in the middle of it. He will brush his fingers over Theo’s shoulder when they’re watching TV, or he’ll lean into him when they’re messing with Popper, or at night when Boris pulls him in against his chest – not wholly unusual, but what is unusual is Theo now feels lips brush against the back of his neck, forming words Theo can’t hear.

He has no idea what it all means.

The desert lives and breaths on around them.

Boris says, “Potter?” but Theo keeps his eyes firmly on the blaring horizon, squinting behind his glasses. Boris says, “ _Theo_.”

Theo huffs in frustration and finally turns, only to find Boris’ face much closer than it had been a moment ago. Boris kisses him with his eyes open, not creepily but heavy-lidded and fluttering, as if to gauge his reaction. Theo is too shocked to close his, and when they part a moment later neither of them says anything, Theo for one too tongue-tied with shock to form words. It is both different and very similar to that very first brush of lips that night, but Boris is more careful this time, almost more cautious, and it leaves him just as breathless nonetheless.

After a moment, Theo manages, “Why did you do that?”

Boris’ eyebrows are pinched, and he is worrying the corner of his mouth between his teeth. “Because I wanted to?”

“You _wanted_ to?”

“Yes, Potter, I _wanted_ to. Fuck.”

Theo, a little stupidly, mutters, “Knock knock, Boris?”

This shocks a laugh out of him, apparently, as his whole demeanour changes. His shoulders wrack and his spine curls into the usual slouch, and Theo hadn’t realised just how tensed up he’d been. “No,” he shakes his head, “Not this time.”

 _Okay_. Theo thinks. _Okay_. This answers at least a couple of the million questions that brew inside of Theo’s mind, specific to the Boris Region.

Feeling loose and bold, suddenly, Theo scooches closer to Boris on the concrete and asks, “Do you want to do it again?”

Boris barks a laugh at the sky. The sky remains stoic back.

(Clouds are forming, tinged with green. It may hail.)

“Yes. Always,” Boris says, and Theo’s brain short circuits for half a second. He eyes Theo out of the corner of his eye, “Do … you? Want to?”

Theo does not answer. Instead, he leans over and tugs Boris in by the back of his neck, and swallows the laughter with his lips.

The Blank Spot created this snow globe, whatever it is, somehow and someway, what is years and years ago, now, with the explosion.

The sky remains green, and it remains summer. It does not rain, or hail, however it regularly threatens to.

Boris keeps on kissing him, mouthing foreign words against his lips that he is beginning to understand, or badly sung song lyrics.

Theo feels content with this, for as long as it wishes to go on.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr.](http://singt0me.tumblr.com/)


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